THE CREATOR AND REDEEMER
"This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this
is the place of repose"—
"For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all
gods…He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His
care." Psalm 95:3, 7
The contemplation of God in all His varied attributes may
well form a theme of refreshment to His people in every stage of the
wilderness journey. Such a contemplation is presented in these combined
verses—the majesty and omnipotence of the Jehovah-Lord, in
combination with the tenderness and grace of the Covenant-Shepherd.
Although composed at a much later date, the greater
portion of the psalm might have been sung by the pilgrim Hebrews as they
were encamped under the grove of Elim. A glance over the contents will show
how desert symbols and memories color and tinge its phraseology. But
it is a song suited for God's spiritual Israel in all ages, both
collectively and individually.
After a triumphal prelude or introduction, the psalm
divides itself into two parts. The first is a summons by His people
to join in this ascription of praise to "the Rock of Salvation;" the second
is the utterance or response of God Himself—an earnest and solemn appeal to
hear His voice and accept His salvation. It is of the first of these alone
we shall now speak.
Two specific grounds or reasons are given for thus
"coming before His presence with thanksgiving, and extolling Him with music
and song."
(1) Because He is CREATOR. (v. 3) "For the Lord is the
great God, the great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the
earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His, for He made it;
and His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship; let us
kneel before the Lord our Maker!"
The Psalmist here makes all material nature around him a
temple resonant with praise to its Almighty Framer. And we may imagine what
a gorgeous shrine the land of Palestine must have been: not as now, cursed
and blighted with barrenness, but as it was, with its mountains and
vineyards and olive-yards—its gorges ("the deep places of the earth,"
perhaps referring to the singular depression in the course of its one
illustrious river)—the sea bordering its western frontier—its happy
villages, climbing to the very tops of the wooded hills—the pastures clothed
with flocks—the valleys, also, covered over with corn! It is the God of this
Temple whose glory he proclaims—He who gave strength to these mountains, and
grandeur to "the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond
number."
Not only does he celebrate (v. 3) Jehovah as a great
Lord, but as a great "King above all (the heathen) gods." In the mythologies
of Greece and Rome, a god was assigned to every department of nature—such as
Neptune, Pluto, Aeolus, and others, gods of sea and fire and wind and
mountain, rain and thunder and the forked lightning. This great King
embraced in His one mighty and powerful hand all these diverse agencies and
elements. He was not the God of "the deep places" only, but He was the God
of the hills—their strength was "His also." His hands not only fashioned the
dry land, but these hands built the rocky caverns of old ocean—"The sea is
His;" He "covered it with the deep as with a garment." In the words of the
challenge of another sacred singer of Israel—"Who (like Him) has measured
the waters in the hollow of His hand, or with the breadth of His hand marked
off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed
the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?" (Is. 40:12).
"God's world is bathed in beauty,
God's world is steeped in light;
It is the self-same glory
That makes the day so bright,
Which thrills the earth with music,
Or hangs the stars in night."
(2) The second ground or reason which the Psalmist gives
for his appeal to worship God with thanksgiving and joyful melody is,
because He is REDEEMER. This is contained in our second motto-verse (v. 7),
where Jehovah is brought before us in His Shepherd character and relation to
His people as THEIR God, their Covenant God—"For He is our God; and we are
the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand." If the old wilderness
of Sinai, as seen from the Elim palms, with its masses and munitions of
gigantic rock, furnished the future Hebrew musicians and chroniclers with
the favorite and most expressive symbol of Divine power and
unchangeableness; Palestine itself, in its grassy hills and sheep-walks,
contributed the more endearing emblem for the covenant relation subsisting
between God and His people—"The Lord is my SHEPHERD, I shall not
lack. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leads me beside the
still waters;" or, as here, "We are His people, and the sheep of His
pasture."
If we are called on to praise and adore 'God our Rock'
for His natural attributes of power, greatness, wisdom, immutability, how
far louder and loftier ought the strains of that song to rise to Him who is
"the Rock of our salvation"—who tends the "Israel within Israel," the true
people of His covenant fold, with all the watchful affection which the
Hebrew shepherd is known to lavish on his fleecy charge—protecting them amid
summer's drought and winter's cold, from the lurking wild beast and the
human plunderer, and risking his own life in their defense! He who, in the
glorious concave of the nightly heavens, as the great Shepherd of the
universe, is sublimely spoken of as keeping watch over fold on fold of
stars—"golden-fleeced sheep"—"calling them all by their names," has the very
same words applied by Divine lips to His spiritual Israel, the flock of His
spiritual pasture: "He calls His own sheep by name, and leads them
out" (John 10:3).
Can we take up the higher note of this anthem? The
deist can sing the first—adoring God as the Creator, who made sky, air,
earth, and heaven; but can we stand under the shelter of the Heavenly Palm
and raise the loftier ascription—"He is our God, and we are the
people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hands"? The God of NATURE!
Noble, indeed, are the themes and illustrations which that name
suggests—the manifested glory of "The blessed and only Potentate, the King
of kings and Lord of lords!" The thunder is His voice; the clouds are the
dust of His feet; He walks upon the wings of the wind; His pavilion round
about Him are dark waters and thick clouds of the sky—at one and the same
moment tracing out the pathway for sun and star, and yet painting the green
of moss and lichen, and imprinting the varied tints on the petals of every
flower.
But, God of GRACE! "The Mighty One of Jacob,
the SHEPHERD, the Rock of Israel."—this "new, best name"—speaks of
forgiveness. It unfolds to us not only the Rock in its giant majesty,
defying the fury of the desert wind, but it discloses to us fissures in that
Rock—blessed crevices—taking shelter in which, the breath of hot wind and
storm pass by us unscathed! "We are the people of His pasture." It tells of
shepherd love and shepherd tenderness. Every nook of the
mountain, every grassy knoll—yes, too, and every bleak corner of these
pasture-grounds—are known to Him! What more than this can we desire?—pardon,
peace, guidance, direction, support, grace, glory! As an old writer quaintly
says, "He leads us in, He leads us through, He leads us on, He leads us up,
He leads us home!"
Let the sweet music of this psalm quicken our footsteps
through every wilderness experience, until the same Divine Shepherd shall
conduct us to the heavenly Elim, by the living fountains of waters, in the
pastures of the Blessed!
"Seek farther, farther yet, O dove!
Beyond the land, beyond the sea,
There shall be rest for you and me,
For you and me and those I love.
"I heard a promise gently fall,
I heard a far-off Shepherd call
The weary and the broken-hearted,
Promising rest unto each and all."
"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of
God."